Chinese language

The hotel where I am scheduled to stay has kindly posted this image on its Web site, which I can print out and then use to tell a taxi driver where I am going.

I've been trying to learn a little about the Chinese language, although I have no hope of learning enough even to order food or ask for directions.

One thing I have learned is that the common written language is one of the unifying factors for the country, although it is spoken in many different dialects that may be unintelligible to "Chinese speakers."

The chair of my department is from Taiwan, and he has also provided me with some Chinese language notecards with some basic phrases ("Does anyone here speak English?) that I can use in a pinch.

I asked him how Chinese keyboards work. He explained that they are the same as Western keyboards--with the same alphabet. To write in Chinese characters, a Chinese person sounds out the words in English and types in those sounds.

The computer then generates the corresponding Chinese characters.

Chinese characters, I read last night, are phonetic--not pictographs or ideographs as is commonly assumed.